


what did you say to my only child?

by braigwen_s



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Autistic Havelock Vetinari, Gen, Implied/Referenced Bullying, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Maternal Instinct
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28088163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braigwen_s/pseuds/braigwen_s
Summary: Robrta Meserole had sent a sweet, gentle child to school in Ankh-Morpork, a fragile thing who stared at butterflies.It had been a long six months.
Relationships: Roberta Meserole & Havelock Vetinari
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	what did you say to my only child?

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'My Eyes' by the Lumineers.

Robrta Meserole had sent a sweet, gentle child to school in Ankh-Morpork, a fragile thing who stared at butterflies. Only half a year later, the child she welcomed home for the semester holidays was hard for her to mentally reconcile. Rather than fragile, he was fragmented. There were no physical injuries that she could observe, but he jumped when she came near him without warning. She saw him knock a butterfly out of the air with an expertly-aimed bit of gravel. She felt horrible, that she had sent her soft-spoken eleven-year-old nephew to a school renowned across the Disc for being where children learned to kill each other, but the will of her late brother had been certain. The Assassins’ Guild in Ankh-Morpork was the only acceptable education for a child of the nobility.

Still, she had thrown him into a den of tigers, and been damn fool enough to assume that he would emerge unscathed.

He was sitting tucked into the corner of her large and airy drawing room. She was crouching in front of him, and finally gripped his wrist, with a minimal amount of pressure. He gasped in pain, and she loosened her hold on him, pulling back his sleeve. There was no discoloration, but he had still been hurt. Her brow drew together. "Names, Havelock,” she said, feeling the set of her jaw, something harsh moving in her limbs. Something protective and jealous, something roaring 'how dare you harm what's mine?'. Bobbi had been quite convinced for some years that there was nothing about mothers she couldn't put her mind to as well; maternal rage seemed to be a clear addition. “I need names."

He looked at her with his eyes wide but tightened, desperate for her to understand but clearly accusing that she wouldn’t. He looked away. “I don't have any names, auntie,” he said. His voice was tiny and clipped and miserable, and she could pick up already the emerging of a Morporkian accent, the long Genuan vowels stifled.

She sat down next to him. “You don't have any names of people who hurt you?" she coaxed.

He shook his head, wrapping it between his knees. He rocked backwards and forwards. Fingers of his right hand threaded through his sleek black hair, rearranging it so that it still hung over his face. "No names of people who didn't."

She cupped his face. So it was the teachers and the students. There were pressing, aching glass shards at her eyelids, but she blinked the tears back. She stood and approached the window. “I'm taking you out," she said.

“No,” he said.

“Damn your father's will,” she snapped. She could live without her brother Guilianno’s money, she would make ends meet. She had a savvy business sense; she’d turned around her late husband’s debts. There was a house of ill repute she had her eyes on investing in; the madam was elderly, and she had already saved two of the girls from being roughed up by customers. She was gathering a niche. “I am your guardian now, and if I want to protect you I will do so."

“No,” he repeated, stubborn as any pre-teenaged boy, and that hurt all the more, as well, that there was a part of him that was like other children his age. This strange, lonely genius who knew more than she did about languages and philosophy, but almost nothing about making friends. It was tugging at both of the parts of her at once: the part that loved the underdog, the part that was entirely _Roberta_ , and the rather cliche, generic part of her that drove her to ridiculous activities like wiping mud off childrens' faces.

She felt her dress and hair spin with her. “ _Why_?” she demanded.

He pushed his chin up, and lifted himself until he was sitting straight-backed and respectable, instead of folded like a pretzel. “I have to do this," he said. There was such certainty and a dreadful, too-grown-up duty in his young voice. She respected his self-determination, but she could hardly bear it. She was quite certain that her ward should be upset at the idea of disappointing her, rather than the other way around.

She let him stay, knowing he would harden into something magnificent. Whether it would be a nightmare or a diamond she avoided considering.


End file.
